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The Pregnant CEO: Should You Hate Marissa Mayer?

She graduated from Stanford with not one but two degrees in computer science (with honors), joined Google in its earliest days and is at the top of her profession.

Me? I spent an hour looking at up-dos on Pinterest when I was supposed to be writing this piece.

That’s why, at 37, she was just appointed the new CEO of Yahoo!, and I’m where I am, and we are two different people who make different choices. That message is getting totally lost in the noise over her new job … and the fact that she’s pregnant.

Mayer will be the 20th current female CEO of a Fortune 500 company; 20 women out of 500 total is only 4%. (Find out why having women in management is associated with improved financial performance.) In addition to chatter around her appointment, much of the buzz has centered around her announcement that she plans to only take a few weeks’ maternity leave—three specifically—and will work throughout that time.

What Everyone’s Whining About Mayer’s getting it from both sides. Sexist online thugs are whining that she only got the job because Yahoo! needed the publicity. That’s expected, nothing new, we all deal with it. Le yawn.

Others say she’s destined to fail at her job of turning around the sinking ship that may or may not be Yahoo!, and that having a baby now makes her especially destined to fail.

But what irks me the most is that she is also getting it from “our” side. Ye Olde Mommy Wars are triggered again. I’m as boob-centric as the next “lactivist,” but I snapped at a friend of mine who complained about feeling “conflicted” on Mayer’s decision to go right back to work after having her kid. (Find out why stay-at-home moms are more likely to be depressed and why this particular stay-at-home mom feels conflicted about not returning to the workforce.)

My friend’s concern was that this set a bad precedent, would be bad for the women’s movement, that it was worrisome that a woman would feel the need to take so little maternity leave and work throughout it all.

Well, you know what sets a worse precedent? Assuming that Mayer’s going to fail, and that this one choice of hers is what’s going to change—or not change—attitudes toward pregnant women in the workplace.

All this back-fence nattering I’m hearing (“She’s in for a rude awakening! She’s gonna regret this! Why’s she even having kids?”) makes me so ashamed. For feminists, for women, for the human race.

This is just one more case of “You cry-it-out, I co-sleep. You nurse on demand, I supplement with formula. You give birth in your tub at home with a midwife, I head to the hospital and demand an epidural.” Let’s call the whole thing off.

My Views Are Colored by My Own Bad Experience When I was pregnant the first time, I was a copywriter at the worst company ever, which discontinued its work-from-home policy because the new leadership wanted more “face time.” As I had progressively more troubling symptoms related to my pregnancy, I went to my boss with a note from my doctor saying I needed to work from home. She shook her head. “They won’t go for it.”

A friend who was an employment lawyer told me, “This is what you’re due, legally.”

“But that’s going to cost the company a lot,” I told him, because apparently I’m a corporate enabler.

“If they can’t afford to give you what you’re legally allowed to have,” he said, “then they don’t have a good business model and your pregnancy is the least of their problems.”

But I didn’t grow a backbone, and I kept pushing myself beyond my limits, crying each morning before I left the house, and finally went into labor ten weeks early and spent six weeks in the NICU with a preemie (who is now fine, thank God). (Read about the study that showed that working women have smaller babies.)

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the process of choosing a ceo lies with the Board. The one common failure with Yahoo all along has been its pathetic Board, just like Hewlett Packard and most other companies that are failing due to lack of leadership. Women for the most part make poor CEO’s and this one too will fail, as her first act as CEO was accepting the job, knowing she was pregnant. Poor decision making and not much of a realist is what she exhibited, not too good for a ceo.

I’m not sure what empirical evidence led you to that conclusion. Most of the studies that I’ve seen highlight that there is a positive correlation between company performance an a diverse board / executive team (notably: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=8724986816286473175&hl=en&as_sdt=0,22&sciodt=0,22). That said the authors are not sure if this is a causal relationship.

But on your other point, which was “accepting the CEO job knowing she was pregnant” is an example of poor decision making.

Is this actually an example of poor decision making? or are you coloring her decision through your own opinions?

Consider that Mayer is reputed to have ~$300M in wealth. Ignoring her salary for a minute, a mere 0.1% of her wealth, or 300,000 could buy the services of four well trained professionals @ 75,000$/y for a whole year.

Now 75,000/year is about 3x the price of your average Nanny — so she could hire four supremely well qualified staffers to care for her child 24/7 (and still have a backup on the side). Or if she wanted to hire the “average” nanny (at about 25,000$/year) she could employ a team of twelve people to look after her newborn.

Now put yourself in her shoes.

With as many as twelve qualified individuals (it’s like a platoon of nannies!) looking after your child’s care for the first twelve months AND at a cost that is basically a rounding error on your wealth… I’d assume that you’d have the wherewithal to focus on the job.

The truth is most firms are atrociously run. In my experience the biggest problem is a complete and total lack of clarity around the business model. Listen to the investor presentations, often lots of generalities and little to no explanation on why they win and what they plan on doing to keep winning. Half the time I don’t even know who their primary customers are!

In a slower moving era when there was less complexity, you didn’t really need to be as clear—you could pretty much copy the other guy and get by. But today, we’re living in the VUCA world. In the face of all that volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity a company needs to have a crystal clear idea of what it wants to do otherwise you’ll lose your footing amongst all complexity and it’s over. Just ask the guys at RIM who were literally on top of the world as few as four years ago (iphone came out in 2007!).

Disagree that “most women make poor CEOs.” Their failure rate is no more dramatic than men’s, but the data is skewed because there are still too few women in that top position. What further research shows is that older women, as with older men, are more experienced leaders and are usually more long-term with their companies. Pepsico, Morgan Stanley, Xerox, London Stock Exchange, to name a few, have females in the top spot. Mayers chose this position knowing it will be short-term. The ride there will be much richer and more spectacular for her than it will be for Yahoo! That she’s with child is moot – unless she didn’t inform the people whop hired her beforehand. That would stink big.

Disagree that “most women make poor CEOs.” Their failure rate is no more dramatic than men’s, but the data is skewed because there are still too few women in that top position. What further research shows is that older women, as with older men, are more experienced leaders when they accept the position and are usually more long-term with their companies. Pepsico, Morgan Stanley, Xerox, London Stock Exchange, to name a few, have females in the top spot. Mayers chose this position knowing it will be short-term. The ride there will be much richer and more spectacular for her than it will be for Yahoo! That she’s with child is moot – unless she didn’t inform the people whop hired her beforehand. That would stink big.

Another possibility, is that she may choose to quit her job and become a stay at home Mom for few years, because she can. And if/when that happens, I’m pretty sure there will be plenty of people criticizing for her choice. You live once, and what you choose to do with your own life is none of anyone’s damn business.

Great post. I am not a fan of Marissa but only time will tell if my feeling are correct. I agree with you 100%. We are not comparing apples to oranges here. She will never be able to feel the pain that normal mothers go through in the normal work place. I guess I won’t either but never the less I still agree with you. I think companies should allow women to have the time needed, have onsite daycare and offer flexible time for their employees. It makes for a better company and happier employee. All that being said we also need to give men the same time off also. #Ü

I think her attorney needs to be calibrated. Does he really believe that the people who make employment laws consider whether the business models of existing companies can actually support the cost of those laws? Alternatively, does he believe companies which cannot support the cost of a new employment law can simply change their business model and make it all work out? Many businesses operate on razor-thin margins and changing the business model to meet new costs is not a viable option. On the other hand, going out of business is an option and apparently it is the option preferred by attorneys like the gentleman mentioned in the article.